Zen in the Art of Motorcycling

"In the case of archery, the hitter and the hit are no longer
two opposing objects, but are one reality. The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as
the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's - eye which confronts him. This state of
unconsciousness is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes
one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite
different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art. "Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen
Herrigel

The state of no-mind kicks in when every cell in my head is drafted. Each neurone turns
up with its call-up papers, has its synapses checked, coughs once, and z....i....p,
its as hairless as Demi Moore.

"Youre all scum!" snarls the low-bred neurone from the gutters of the
thalamus, waving dendrites like a hydra, "Its death or glory time now my little
aesthetic FRIENDS! And you can shove your iambic pentameters where none of your effete
rhyming CHUMS are ever likely to twiddle their AXONS - youre gonna work like
youve never worked in your caffeine-soaked lives."

And they do work. They have to. Its death and glory time.

"Behold, a pale horse, and its rider's name was death,
and Hell followed him ..."

A Honda CBR 900RR Fireblade is a sports motorcycle. It weighs 183 kilograms - 403
pounds - and my tuned version delivers a measured 120 bhp at the rear wheel. That is
a power-to-weight ratio of 666 horsepower to the ton. They are all pale horses, and death
rides on every one, flipping from mount to mount like a Mongolian stunt rider on speed.

To put this apocalyptic horsepower in context, the 1999 Porsche Carrera makes 228
horsepower to the ton, and the Dodge Viper, 304 horsepower to the ton. Sure, these cars
have Arnies muscles, but they are hidden in the body of Orson Welles. And they munch
burgers like Honest Bill Clinton. Grinding the point in further, the Mclaren F1, fêted as
the ultimate road-legal supercar, weighs just over a ton and makes 627 horsepower, so it
doesn't quite cut it either.

A Fireblade accelerates. In the time it takes to say "one Mississippi, two
Mississippi, three Missisi ..." the Blade has reached 60 mph. Or so I am told. I
never look at the speedometer during moments of wild acceleration because I feel like I
have been fired out of a giant Roman ballista.

Or the replica trebuchet last seen making the round of English country fairs, the main
attraction being its ability to hurl pianos from one side of a village common to the
other. The Human Cannonball, who refused to change his name despite it being a trebuchet,
would sometimes accompany the piano on its parabola and play the opening bars of Clair
de Lune, his accelerated tempo briskly anticipating the moment when the piano would go
abruptly and terminally out of tune.

Catapult acceleration on a Blade is not a novelty act, something to do on a lonely
stretch of country road. At each set of traffic lights I filter to the front of the cars,
and when the lights go green it is tyre-torturing time. If the lights go green before I
reach the front, I let rip anyway, hurtling past the lead cars like a shoulder-launch
missile. I short-shift into second as I hit the power band to keep the front wheel on the
ground, and then hang on as the front wheel flaps over bumps in the road, the rubber only
barely making contact as the bike tries to rear up on its tail. Cars hundred of yards
ahead flinch visibly into the nearside as a multi-coloured apparition with headlights
blazing fills the rear-view in an impossibly short period of time, and then Im gone.
I do feel pangs of guilt at the genuine alarm caused. I suppose early motorists must have
felt the same, causing horses and riders to bolt into the hedgerows as they flew past at a
heady 12 mph.

However, the purpose of this essay isnt to engage in narrative bravado, or
indulge in tales of derring-do and self-promotion. It is to discuss no-mind. A master of
Kung-Fu would discuss no-mind in the context of beating the living daylights out of
someone. A Samurai archer immersed in the traditions of Kyodo, the Way of the Bow, would
go on about the unity of mind and target, and the difference between knowledge and
knowing. I do neither Kung Fu or archery. I ride a motorcycle.

It is the view of many mystical systems that the experience of living in the world
differs greatly according to our mode of perceiving and comprehending it. The
"normal" mode of perception (a gross simplification, like all averages) is
characterised by illusion, glamour, and in the gnostic systems, deceipt. There is a veil
drawn over reality that leads us into false perception and error. We can look, but we
cannot see.

This normal mode of perception, because it is based on illusory or even deceptive
truths, is like the shell game where we think we know where the pea is, and always come
away losers. In this losing game we value things that have no intrinsic value, pursue
goals that can be attained for only a minute span of time, chase after things that can
bring no lasting happiness, and when death approaches, find no satisfaction or worth in
our lives. It is this selfish, ego-led mode of consciousness, dominated by illusory and
worthless goals, that causes pain and suffering to others and ourselves, leading to
Gautama Buddha's observation that all existence is sorrow.

It is also a view of many mystical systems that attaining to a mode of perception not
dominated by the illusions and fantasies of the ego is difficult. When the ego is set the
task of deconstructing itself, it will invariably create a even more exotic fantasy
playroom, so that the problem becomes worse, not better. There is nothing the human ego
enjoys more than a mystery, a goal, lots of interesting courses to go on, and things to
buy. And there is always a guru prepared to make a dishonest living out of fabricating the
next set of illusions, weaving a new veil of mystery from the unravelling yarn of the old.

It took about two years on the Fireblade to reach the state of no-mind. I had been
riding motorcycles on a daily basis for thirty-one years, but I had not owned a bike that
could accelerate, brake and corner so fast that each cell in my head was needed to make it
around the next bend. It took time in boot camp, and time in manoeuvres, to weld my
neurons together into a bunch of grizzled veterans capable of sniggering at death. It took
time.

I had to learn how much I could trust the bike. Then I had to learn not to panic. Bikes
are not forgiving in corners. Hit the corner too hard, and the bike will flop on the
road as the tyres lose adhesion. Panic and apply the brakes without knowing how to counter
steer to hold it down, and the bike will rise up and run wide into the nearest hedge, or
into oncoming traffic. Or it will low-side as the front wheel realises that it cannot
brake and corner at the same time - front wheels have trouble rubbing their tummies and
patting their heads. Apply power too soon coming out of a corner and the rear wheel will
slip sideways then grip, causing the bike to flip the rider over the top like a rodeo
cowboy.

In rural England where I live there is gravel, horse shit, mud from tractors, wet
leaves, potholes, corrugations and slippery metal manhole covers, and a spreading canker
of shiny white lines, rumble strips and speed bumps. I've seen house bricks lying on the
road, lengths of joisting, and even scaffold poles. There are wandering dogs, herds of
cattle, fallen branches, and there are lethal diesel spills everywhere - when it rains the
roads are a multi-hued kaleidoscope of slippery hydrocarbons. There are parked cars,
road works, slow-moving agricultural vehicles and my favourite, the forty ton articulated
truck coming around the corner on the wrong side of a narrow country road. Or even better,
a forty-tonner overtaking another forty-tonner through a blind corner on a sleepy country
lane.

During the early days of neural boot camp I would find myself thinking Jesus wept
as I struggled to do too many things at once. I would misjudge a corner and run wide
across the road. I would fly past a sports car on the straight only to find it tailgating
me through the corners. I would accelerate into situations I couldnt brake out of.
It is a subtle and profound truth that the cautious and conservative driver obtains no
routine experience of hard braking. Braking is the key to travelling like Jehu, and it is
a paradoxical truth that maniacal riding is the best way to practice for the day when the
road runs out - desperate riding breeds safe reflexes.

A day came when I would go out with guys from the bike club, ride like Jehu, and not at
any time find myself checking my nine lives for frayed edges. This was a novel experience.
I was in my comfort zone I had reached a state of effortless effort. Some guys
would be ashen-faced. Some never came back. One guy needed counselling in a roadside
country pub to get him back on his bike.Each year I found myself taking the same corners
10% faster. A corner I used to take at 80 mph I now take at 110 mph.

The state of no-mind is not literally a state of no mind. It is a state where the
normal process of mentation, of rational decision making, of deliberation, even
self-observation, stops. Carlos Castaneda describes the condition of "stopping the
world", an end to internal dialogue, the constant chatter of the mind as it
fabricates reasons and justifications and explanations and reactions and responses.

It is now known that the human brain is limited in how many tasks it can perform
simultaneously. Set a complex task, and resources are drawn from other areas of the brain.
Set a complex enough task, and resources are drawn from all areas of the brain. Riding a
high-performance motorcycle at the limit of its performance on the congested suburban
roads of England is such a task. In Zen archery there is a lack of concern about hitting
the target. I have no such equanimity about making it around corners. I aim to ride
everywhere as fast as I can and arrive. It takes every cell in my head to do that.

It is impossible to "think about" or imagine altered states, usually because
it is the "thinking about" and imagining state of consciousness that is the
primary barrier to achieving them. That is why so many traditions use meditation to quiet
the mind. The state of no-mind is consciousness without self-consciousness, a pure
undivided, unreflective awareness. And it is frighteningly quick. Animal quick,
snake-strike quick, absorbing huge amounts of information and responding effortlessly
before the chattering mind could even begin to formulate a plan of action.

There is a scene towards the end of The Matrix where Keanu Reeves is able to
fight the arch-villain casually, effortlessly, without attention. This is the state of
effortless effort. No amount of gymnastics, brute force, gritted teeth, or concentration
can achieve this state. It isnt about doing more. It is about doing less. When I am
in this state I dont feel like I am pushing myself or the bike, each corner comes
and goes without effort, I have no near encounters with death. I arrive relaxed and
exhilarated. Objectively, I am travelling very quickly. Some motorcycle riders call this
experience "getting into the flow".

There is an important factor in achieving this state. It is familiarity. Constant,
daily, unremitting practice. Riding a motorcycle is dangerous. Many sports are dangerous
only when carried out without proper equipment and training. With good equipment and
training, parachuting is not dangerous.

Motorcycling is objectively and statistically dangerous at all times. Insurance
premiums for younger riders on powerful bikes are set at a level that assumes the bike
will be written off. Heavy traffic, like the sea, is an elemental force and there is a
level of external danger that is irreducible, that cannot be factored out. Cautious riding
doesn't help. It is like telling a sailor in a huge sea to "take care", as if
the sea respected caution. Riding a bike and staying alive is a Zen koan, a
statement that appears to have a logical form but lacks an answer that can be beaten out
of it by logical analysis.

In the beginning, riding a motorcycle is an idea, a collection of abstractions,
dos and donts, rules and procedures, but few brain cells know what to do.
After some months, a few cells have learned the drill, but it is still the chattering mind
that is riding the bike. It is aware of all the procedures as abstractions, but it rides
at the speed of the chattering mind, which is to say, slowly and cautiously. Or it tries
to emulate a rider in the no-mind state, and it crashes. The experience of the flow, of
no-mind, occurs when the experience of riding has been so internalised that the whole mind
is able to join in. To make an analogy, it doesnt help to have a huge mob of
people at a barn-raising if they dont know carpentry.

I ride the Blade 40 miles every day through heavy traffic and I ride as hard as I can
get away with at all times, usually in the 90-120 mph zone, and full-blast acceleration.
It took two years before I became aware that something had changed, that I could go faster
without effort, that I was hurtling into corners at suicidal speeds, that I was travelling
40 mph faster than cars around the same corners, that the traffic seemed to be stationary
and I rode around it. The rational part of me screams "hubris", but it also
acknowledges the truth - I have fewer near misses than at any time in thirty-one years of
motorcycling. I drive through the traffic rather than in the traffic, a
surfer skimming down the crests of congestion (like the mystic who was supposedly in
the world, but not of it). The endless, crawling rivers of cars are the Absolute,
the Tao, the Way; my Blade is the arrow that finds the target. The articulate part of me
continues to observe, provides occasional strategic advice but is reduced to the
role of a secretary at a board meeting. In the quieter moments, it observes, records,
takes minutes. When things speed up, its brain cells are marched off to the front line and
it has to shut up.

Motorcyclists are competitive on the road. It is difficult to overtake another
motorcyclist without initiating a leap-frogging game of "so you think you're fast
eh?". The state of no-mind cannot be competitive. It can be quick, but not
competitive. It has no goals, no objectives, no needs. Travelling is the only reality, the
road and traffic the Absolute. The only subject for awareness is the undivided,
being-at-one with the bike as it moves with the road and traffic. Competing is an
intrusion, an eruption of ego into the rhythm of the flow. Going fast is a dangerous goal,
a ego goal that pits me against the flow, a loss of natural harmony with what is.
Anyone who thinks "I bet I could ride faster than Colin" is probably right; this
isn't a paeon of justification for riding like a hoon. When I ride fast it is not because
I set out to ride fast; it is because I have no awareness of speed. Eugen Herrigel
describes this state in Zen and the Art of Archery:

Zen is the "everyday mind" . . . This "everyday mind" is no
more than "sleeping when tired, eating when hungry." As soon as we reflect,
deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconsciousness is lost and a thought
interferes. We no longer eat while eating, we no longer sleep while sleeping. The arrow is
off the string but does not fly straight to the target, nor does the target stand where it
is. Calculation which is miscalculation sets in. The whole business of archery goes the
wrong way. The archer's confused mind betrays itself in every direction and every field of
activity.

I believe animals live in a similar timeless state of undivided awareness, superbly
competent at doing what they do, reacting at the speed of reflex, and dangerous because of
it. I have learned to trust this state of holistic pre-verbal decision making. It knows
how to do a lot more than ride motorcycles, and it does it very quickly. Its downfall is
that it is pre-verbal: it can act, but it cannot explain. It can be at the right place at
the right time, but it cannot engage the support of other people. It sits outside the
verbal social structure. Like the priestess Cassandra, daughter of the king of Troy, it is
cursed to know the truth and never be believed and not because of a failure of
articulation - it was never capable of articulating in the first place.

Man is a thinking reed but his great works are when he is not calculating and
thinking. "Childlikeness" has to be restored with long years of training in the
art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think. He
thinks like the showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling on the
ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the nightly heavens; he thinks like the green
foliage shooting forth in the relaxing spring breeze. Indeed, he is the showers, the
ocean, the stars, the foliage.

I will conclude with the necessary caveat. I don't ride hard to prove anything. I ride
hard because there is a natural exhiliration, a tautness of reflex, an almost psychic
connection with other road users, that happens when I reach a certain level of
involvement. Riding like Jehu in relative safety is not something I aspire to. It is not a
goal, it is not something one can copy. It is something that happens when I am not trying,
and it happens because I have paid my dues by spending lots of time riding by the book.
What might appear to be dangerous, even undisciplined, is the result of using a motorcycle
as my main daily transport for thirty-one years. Riding a sports motorcycle through heavy
traffic is a physical discipline as complex as any martial art, and it requires similar
levels of constant practice in order to internalise the lessons. I don't feel
invulnerable, and I commute to work in race leathers with integral body armour. Race
boots, gloves, full-face helmet.

Mess around, play games, and you will kill yourself or injure yourself seriously. And
it isn't a remote possibility.

Pictures of some of my motorcycles and various anecdotes in Colin's Bikes.